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epee1221 writes "Markus Persson, a.k.a. Notch, the developer of Minecraft, posted on his development blog today that PayPal limited his account with unspecified cause on August 25th. Since then, payments for the alpha version of Minecraft have continued accumulating while Notch has been unable to withdraw them, and the account now contains over €600,000. PayPal recently told him it may take up to two more weeks for things to get sorted out and that if they conclude that there is funny business involved, they will keep the money."
This unfortunate news followed an announcement a few days ago that he and a friend would be starting a studio of their own to continue development on Minecraft and start working on a new project.

Those guys are a law unto themselves, and their dispute resolution system adds new meaning to the word opaque.

I've had money removed from my account several years back (about £80) and spent 3 months on the phone trying to get it back, granted 2 of those months were talking to my bank (natwest) after being stonewalled by paypal, natwest decided at the end of 3 months to tell me they had no record of me ever making a complaint and that I would need to go to the police.

I swore off ever using paypal again But here I am, 3 years or so later with a paypal account I use regularly. Not having one is just far too much of a hindrance when it comes to things like using ebay, and paying for minecraft.

They blocked my account for reasons that were not clear to me, but had to do with being an American living in Germany using a German bank. There was a way to get it unblocked, but it was complicated and not worth my time. I only ever used it for eBay, so I just stopped using eBay.They are just stupid.

I was popping in to ask the same question... who uses paypal? I've found it completely unnecessary, hard to use, and has an unreasonably large potential for fraud/theft. Sometimes I buy something online and I have no choice but to intersect with some form of PayPal money laundering. Invariably I decide I don't need that thing so badly and buy elsewhere.

For payment-only, you often have no choice, because it's what eBay and/or a particular merchant accepts. On the other hand, for payment-only it's also relatively unproblematic, because you shouldn't have large amounts of money sitting in the account that PayPal could freeze.

For accepting money, you're much more exposed to PayPal's whims, and you also have a choice of what payment processor you use. However, you don't often have many good choices. Two of its competitors are Google Checkout and Amazon's payment service, but they're much less international. PayPal supports dozens of currencies and merchants in >100 countries, while Google Checkout is limited to only merchants in the U.S. and U.K., and Amazon's payments services only allow withdrawal of funds to U.S. bank accounts (and only do transactions in U.S. dollars). Since the Minecraft developer is Swedish, neither of those are options.

Another alternative is to set up a merchant account for processing credit-card payments yourself, but you need to be a certain size for that to be a sensible option. The Minecraft guy probably is big enough now that a merchant account makes sense, but he wasn't when he started out as a random 1-man shop selling a $10 game on the internet.

Basically there is a big gap in the market for lightweight payment-acceptance services available to non-American merchants. If you're in Sweden, you have PayPal, a merchant account, accepting bank transfers directly, and mailed payments.

Another alternative is to set up a merchant account for processing credit-card payments yourself, but you need to be a certain size for that to be a sensible option. The Minecraft guy probably is big enough now that a merchant account makes sense, but he wasn't when he started out as a random 1-man shop selling a $10 game on the internet.

I'm going to use this as an opportunity to plug BrainTree -- my new employer uses them as our payment gateway, and they're a dream to work with: They provide well-written APIs for all common platforms, and when I have a problem I get an email back from a member of their dev team typically in about 30 minutes.

Their front page says "We [heart] developers", and AFAICT they mean it. Github is one of their marquee customers.

You should always use the correct spelling and abbreviations with any online commerce.Spelling out lane or drive or court , etc. can make it difficult if not impossible to accurately locate you. If something is being delivered to you and the address is not correct, or the phone number is NOT answered (or long distance) you might not get what you ordered.
Also your apartment number/letter (or suite or such) is NOT part of the street name. If there is a box for 'un

Theirs is a common tactic, they'll block accounts with lots of money so meanwhile they can earn interest. In California there was a class action on this, but because they settled out of court the lawyers got most of the settlement money, not the people, and they can keep doing it because this involves only California. They tried in Australia but the courts shot them down because, unlike in the U.S., in the rest of the developed world governments protect their people.

I stopped selling on ebay (ebay owns Paypal) over a year ago and don't touch PayPal anymore because of their lack of honesty.

PayPal must be considered a bank because that's exactly what it does, and follow regulation.

PayPal power results from 2 factors. Terrible bank bank transfer opportunities for individuals domestically, and even more expensive ones internationally.
In many European countries nobody uses Paypal for transactions. It's either direct bank transfer (many banks offer no-fee transfers to other banks), bank-based payment system or credit cards. Yet in the US (a HUGE consumer market) those options are limited to credit cards, and check / ACH system and PayPal fills that niche just perfectly. It's changing, i.e. SunTrust recently introduced cheap on-line wire-transfers for only $3 / transfer - a big upgrade, as it used to be $25. Yet for some reason, the interbanking system in the US is still far behind what Europe has to offer (except for credit cards - there are definitely more developed here!)

Yes. In Canada you can do an Interac email money transfer from most banks for about $1. If the receiver is with one of the major banks they can have the money in their account within minutes of receiving the email from the sender and if they are with one of the institutions not participating in the scheme then they can use a middleman-service and still get the money within IIRC 3 days. There is also HyperWallet which seems favoured by the credit unions and a few of the banks and they provide a similar service... in fact the fastest way to get money into your PayPal account from a Canadian bank is to use HyperWallet.

I used to use Western Union wire transfers but they have become insanely expensive IMHO.

Ah, yes, its those horrible Fat Cats and their Reptilian Overlords. Down with Capitalism! Free love and free weed are a human right!

I mean, it couldn't be just a case of there being very little demand for wire transfers due to the pervasiveness of credit cards, resulting in higher fees on a per-transfer basis. No, that's FAR too unlikely.

And only in America is saying, "hey, a little bit of socialism ain't so bad" is equated with "DOWN WITH CAPITALISM FASCIST ILLUMINATI!" Things don't have to be so black and white. I promise you, in "socialist" Europe, capitalism is doing just fine. That's also why I put socialism in quotes in my initial post.

As for your reasoning, no. The very fact that PayPal even exists shows that there is demand for something like this. As does online bill pay (which actually

I'm on my 10th-ish PayPal account. I NEVER accept money through it. I send a GoogleCheckout invoice. Even for eBay.

But on Car forums, certain websites, etc, it seems all they accept is PayPal. So I'll use it with a temporary credit card until they figure out I'm the same person as my other locked accounts and lock another one.

It all started when I sold something on eBay. Turns out it was with a stolen credit card. So they reversed the payment leaving me with a -$600 balance. Which they said was my fault somehow. Then the second account I sold a laptop and has $400 sitting in it 'locked up' until I pay them the $600 in the first account.

I'm not a violent man, but I could honestly go vigilante on some middle managers at PayPal with a crow bar.

Turns out it was with a stolen credit card. So they reversed the payment leaving me with a -$600 balance.

I'm not saying that it's right, but the real banks do exactly the same thing. As a merchant, all the risk is yours. The agreements you have to sign with banks (or other credit card transaction handlers) are truly horrendous, but you can't take your business elsewhere, because they're all pretty much the same.

If the credit card was stolen, then the loss should come out of the credit company's pocket, not Paypal or the Ebay seller. PLUS paypal is supposed to provide seller protection if the item was shipped to a verified address.

If it were me I'd track down the buyer and demand back whatever product he stole. You have the address.

ALSO: Those comments that say Paypal is not regulated are flat wrong. There are numerous regulations/laws that cover Paypal, and it was their violations of those laws that got them into trouble with multiple American States several years ago. The judge in the case nullified huge sections of Paypal's EULA as being contrary to these laws. ("Consumers cannot sign-away their rights already protected by state and/or federal law.").

If the credit card was stolen, then the loss should come out of the credit company's pocket, not Paypal or the Ebay seller.

Why?

Being pretty far to the left politically, I'm just about the least likely person I know to have sympathy for a bank, but I just don't see why the bank is responsible here.

The law in the US limits the liability of the cardholder, who may well be the one most at fault. So it is the merchant who bears the cost. When the fraudster uses a stolen credit card, he is stealing from the merchant, not the cardholder. What the GP is asking is for somebody else to compensate him for having been robbed of $600. I

Why? Because it's the credit card company's fault for making an insecure system. They should be held liable, and maybe that would encourage them to develop more secure systems that can't be swiped so easily. Example: A few years ago I had the digits stolen off my Discover card, probably by the man at the hotel where I stayed. Either he or someone else racked-up $3500 using a fake card at Walmart. Obviously it's not my fault, but neither is it Walmart's fault.

Nice try, but no, it's not. You may wish to actually bother to read the agreement you signed when you opened that account. Universally, you will find a clause that says "At all times, any cards issued attached to account remain the property of [issuing institution] and must be returned upon demand."

I have the right to control who uses it (me only).

If anything, you mean the responsibility. I don't think you'll find many rights to using a card. You could authorize additional users, but when you let someone else use your card, you'd be forfeiting any and all protections against liability stemming from the use of said card.

I have DEMAND PHOTO ID written below my signature, so the clerk will ask to see my photo.

Again, it's a basic tenet of human maturity and responsibility that we read and comprehend the contracts we enter into. However, evidently, many of us choose not to, and wax indignant and polemic, ignorant of our ignorance. In your cardholder contract, the one you signed, if not also on the card itself, you'll find a clause, "This card is valid ONLY UPON the signature of the cardholder.". In many cases, this emphasis is explicit. Many contracts / institutions will also state that you are not to write CHECK ID on the card.

That same contract will also state that your issuing institution, and the merchants in its network reserve the right to seize and retain possession of your card, and that the merchant may destroy the card on instruction from the institution. Remember, it's not your property?

Now, why, may you ask, would they accept a signature on the back of your card, and not "CHECK ID"? Several reasons: 1) what makes you think your average merchant is trained in recognizing counterfeit ID or verifying identity from facial features? (Not that they are expected to be graphologists either, but that's another matter). 2) Some people like to believe that having such a request on their card raises the bar of liability and / or protection for them from fraudulent claims - "Did they check my ID?" - when in fact it does no such thing, after all your issuing institution made no such agreement with you, and in fact you went outside the bounds of your agreement to impart an obligation on your relationship between you and your merchant that has no bearing, weight or merit.

Don't even bother referring to card-not-present transactions. The merchant pays a higher fee on such transactions, precisely because of the increased risk.

Don't get your panties all twisted up because someone on the Internet has the unmitigated gall to suggest you actually read the contracts you enter into before mouthing off petulantly.

If PayPal stole close to $1,000,000.00 US from me and I couldn't get it back through legal methods, I'd burn their fucking building to the ground with them in it.
That's more money than a lot of people see in their entire lifetime.

Ah yes, Enderandrew. I said I had problems with Paypal refusing to offer dispute resolution on one of my sales (via a third party) and he insisted that Paypal is flawless, and it was my processor's fault. Also insisted that any problems can easily be sorted by calling Paypal's "giant customer service centre".

There's a credit card table that lists every credit card ever entered into the system, there's an address table that lists every mailing and billing address ever entered, there's a series of tables that list the information for every transaction ever attempted, etc.

It's EUR10 each, so that's only 60k pre-orders. I wrote a WoW addon that's used by a couple thousand people, and Minecraft is arguably 30x cooler than my addon. The internet is a big place; 60k people is pretty reasonable.

Every time I start thinking about creating a PayPal account because it would be nice to give money to some of the web places that I frequent, but only accept PayPal some story comes along about how willing they are to screw you over. Hopefully this publicity forces them to do the right thing here soon.

Ask *anyone* who sells frequently on eBay, and you'll hear a story about how they've been screwed by PayPal. It is a cost of doing business, like paying protection money to the mob. If you complain about it too loudly, they lock your account and take it all.

That's because they don't exist. Even if the statistics back you up (and I'll bet every penny I've ever spent via Paypal they don't) we hear about the illegitimate business practices and not the few successes.

Last time I tried to use Paypal they took money off my credit card, then refused to route it through to the recipient. As they were acting as a merchant acquirer in the transaction, and I don't have a Paypal account, by holding onto those funds they were effectively stealing money from me.

So I threatened them with court action, asked my card company to reverse the transaction, and complained to the FSA and to Mastercard.

I got my money back eventually, and now refuse to do business with anybody that only accepts payment via Paypal. It's inconvenient at times, but not as inconvenient as giving money to a corrupt business and still not receiving the services/goods I've paid for.

The CEOs were bouncing around in their piles of money so exuberantly that one got sick in his. The amount of money in your account fits our CEO frolicking needs perfectly. Thank you for the interest free loan, and don't ask about the funny smell on your money when you do receive it.

and yet, the one time I had an issue with an online merchant I'd bought from via Google Checkout, filling in Google's "it went wrong" form led to an immediate response from Google, and a couple of days later a refund in full.

When the process works seamlessly without me needing direct contact with a person, I'm willing to forgo that contact.

I am using Paypal to sell a game. The demographics are USA 39%, UK 11%, Italy 8% and so on. Overall the 20-80 rule is observed.By using Google Checkout instead of PayPal, I would have prevented 61% of my sales - you know, long tail and all. It's true that only 0.05% of the sales are from e.g. Maldives, but all these sales add up.

If Google Checkout gets global, I'll be the first to jump. Until then, Paypal is a simple method trusted by the buyers. I just make sure I don't keep my money there.

IF you are in the UK and US but forget Canada. I tried signing a few months back and there nowhere did it say as a Canadian I couldn't use checkout until I filled out my info, including my cell number and after submission I got a nice notice of I can't use it because I'm in Canada. So these fucks just got my personal business info and then one they got it they tell me I can't use the service.

Years ago, when I pulled my account information from them it was "common" knowledge in the eBay scene that if you were a seller and a buyer claimed it was a fraudulent sale, PayPal would pull the refund directly from your PayPal account without notice. If the funds were not in your PayPal account, they would pull it from your linked checking account, again, without notice.

The common strategy was to setup a second "dummy" checking account and link PayPal to that one. Whenever you had money in your PayPal account above a certain amount, pull it into your "dummy" account and then transfer the full balance _out_ of that account into one that isn't linked to PayPal.

Why someone would trust PayPal, who isn't a bank, with well over half a million dollars is beyond me.

THIS. THIS. THIS. I own a fairly decent sized hosting business (several million dollars a year in revenue). We take Paypal as a payment option, but despise them. We have a seperate business checking account solely tied to our Paypal account, and we sweep our paypal balance into our checking account every 1-2 days (and have our bank set to move any money in the paypal checking account to our operating account not tied to paypal). Never. trust. Paypal.

Why someone would trust PayPal, who isn't a bank, with well over half a million dollars is beyond me.

I don't think they did, the summary makes it sound like they kept the balance low but have been locked out of their account for whatever reason and since they were locked out 600,000 Euros (actually more than 3/4 of a million dollars!) has come into the account. They've had no way to remove it, no way to prevent the money coming in short of shutting down their operation, and no way outside of PayPal's customer service to resolve the situation. Honestly, it's almost criminal (or maybe even is criminal, I don't know).

Just google "credit card merchant account" and most terms for internet only merchant accounts is something like $15/mo + flat $0.30/ transaction + 2% of the gross amount. They all have 1-800 numbers with live, english speaking (native speakers, even).. it's pretty legitimate, and has been around for quite some time. Many of them have free plugins to use with your Drupal site, etc to use. It might have been rocket science in 2003 but it's just a set of credentials, a piece of code, and a bank account number

With my bank I can hop online and pay anyone in the world any amount of money. Well, they seem to limit it to how much I currently have in my account, and if the person I wish to pay does not have a real address (No "221B Baker Street + 2i" allowed), I'll have to hand deliver it instead of getting them to post it for free, but there's little limitation there.

Oh, and did I mention that the whole thing doesn't cost me a cent?

Heck, the only thing it's missing is a few features like:- The ability to transfer money anonymously (all the recipient would get would be a confirmation crypto hash or something, maybe something that I could reveal later in a court, but that they couldn't* pin on me)- The ability to make a storefront so all of the fund transfer went through "Qubit's Quantum Quickymart"- Better account management, and a way to group or tag business and bills vs. friends vs. impulse game purchases (The way GMail handles email is a good first shot at a UI)

The bank isn't making money when I transfer funds, but they don't care -- they're already making money on the stuff I have sitting in their coffers.

So why are we stuck with PayPal, which is pretty much a- Shady- Costly- Annoying- Duplicate service

??

Hopefully some bank (or series of banks) will make this happen for us. Moving money around shouldn't be anywhere near this complicated!

The only problem I can see is why would a bank go through this hassle.
Currently they can just hold onto your money and put it into the Federal Reserve and make money.
Why go through all the hassle of dealing with buyers and sellers.
It's much more lucrative to them if the sale goes through a credit account also.

When it comes to smaller amounts(under 5k), it's a toss up on using Google Checkout or Paypal. But anything over that, and you're just asking for trouble. These guys were way past to point of needing a real credit card processor. With that kind of money, it makes a lot more sense to just get a merchant account. Look at Paypal like a piggy bank. It's fine for loose change, but you wouldn't stick your retirement money in there.

I go to the game's homepage, and I see a video about rollercoasters, and not gameplay.

I browse around the site, nothing. The only, ONLY description of the game is, I quote, "Minecraft is a game about placing blocks while running from skeletons. Or something like that..", followed by the rollercoaster video, and then "The game is a lot like that, but also has enemies and cave exploring and mining and farming and flowing water and dynamic lighting and a huge (huge) randomly generated world map."

Yeah, thanks. I've never heard of Minecraft before, and I'd guess that few people have. So what is it - a rollercoaster game with zombies and farming?!

Anyway...

The pre-purchase page says "If you pre-purchase now during alpha, you pay just 9.95!"

If we round it to 10 EUR, 600k is sixty thousand people paying for something that is basically entirely unknown and isn't even described on the website.

Actually, sixty thousand people have paid for it just since the account was frozen!

Minecraft is an entirely new category of game. There is no name for this new category. This is why indie development rocks; EA is happy to release new iterations of the FPS, but they would never gamble with a new class of game entirely.

The basic idea of Minecraft is this: you find yourself in a randomly-generated 3D world. It's daytime. At night, monsters will pop out of the darkness and attack you. Your only hope of survival is to harvest resources from the world (wood, stone, etc.) and build a shelter and weapons to defend yourself. The night/day cycle repeats: harvest, build, defend.

Here, let me type 9 characters into YouTube for you. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Minecraft&page=&utm_source=opensearch [youtube.com]
Bam! Watch. Be educated. Or shit, look at Wikipedia. It can explain it too. It's amazingly popular among other Internet forums (Something Awful, LueLinks, part of 4chan), as even though it's an alpha, it's been fully playable for months. So, you know. Multiplayer games that let you goof off and hang out with people make money. SHOCK.
I'm not sure if you're lazy, stupid, or a troll. But your post is calling the guy out on tricking people, when there's an easy to find product there.... Though, looking at your name, I suppose I have the answer.

Sixty thousand people have bought the game since May 2009, not in the last two weeks.

I bought the game a couple of months ago and every other game in my collection had been neglected.

The basic gist of it is that the entire world is generated from cubes on the fly. You explore, chop down trees, make tools, mine for minerals and stone, build houses/castles/towers/ridiculous pixel art sculptures and watch out for monsters which inhabit the world at night and dark corners of your mines and naturally-occuring caves. The world is generated on the fly as you explore, with mountains, rivers, forests, caves and the occasional treasure room. Multiplayer is in the early stages right now, but fun. Single player is an amazing time waster, it's so easy to get completely sucked into a world made up of giant pixels.

It's one of the best indie games I've ever tried and it's made by just one guy.

I bought it. I love it. I've been telling everyone who'll listen to me about it.

The reason the site contains so little information about the game is because there isn't much to tell – by and large, the game is the definition of a sandbox. For gameplay examples, you should look at some Let's Play videos; I recommend the ones done by mastatsan [youtube.com].

BTW, the reason it's sold so many copies is because 4chan's/v/ [4chan.org] hooked onto it in a major way, and it's spreading quite quickly through Reddit [reddit.com]. My point is, altho

back in 1997 i ran a similar internet video game... edrugtrader.com... it's still running, but i no longer accept payments to play. paypal froze my account and seized all of the money from the then 100,000+ users. the game is based on drug dealing, and they claimed i was breaking the law because drug dealing is illegal... however there was no actual drug dealing... it's just a market simulation game.

If you buy through Paypal and receive the product via a download, there is no guarantee that the product got into the hands of the legal owner of the credit card.

So with stolen credit cards or Paypal accounts, some people must have been downloading the game (or however its registered). When the rightful owners found out, they had the charges reversed. Leaving Paypal to prove that the money wasn't indeed stolen.

Paypal offers protection only if you send to 'verified address'. If you send the product to some random address, then you are taking a risk. Likewise with activation codes.

If Bob.Smith@hotmail.com trys to buy something from you using a Paypal account assigned to Nancy.Smith@google.com, your an idiot if you send the activation code to Bob.Smith@hotmail.com. Activation code should only be sent to Nancy.Smith.

Bottom line, if he has 600,000 in the account, you can bet Paypal was just hit up by a credit card company to return some of that money. Paypal is just trying to figure out exactly what has to be returned. If its a lot of accounts, Paypal might freeze the account just to see how much money needs to be returned. Eventually, when whatever statute of limitations runs out, he will get the balance (Paypal of course gets the interest over those many months).

Straw man. I never said it was because he was successful, but picture this: a small indie game making a few hundred bucks a week suddenly gets a 600,000 euro deposit. What does that look like to you? Paypal has a legal duty to prevent money laundering.

Exactly. What does preventing theft get Paypal? They have their cut already. This was because 600,000 euroes went into the account, not because 600,000 euroes went out of it. Where's the profit in freezing an account with nothing in it?

Okay, so yeah. That seems like a LOT of money to be traveling through the accounts of an alpha indie game. Maybe Paypal had real reasons to suspect something fishy was going on.

It's none of their darned business to unilaterally claim something fishy is going on unless there is a complainant. It doesn't sound as if there is one in this case so they should keep their paws off until there is a cause to freeze the account.

Banks routinely monitor accounts for "suspicious activity" and suspend those accounts until they can confirm what's going on. I've had credit cards locked because a fraudster started charging a series of gas station transactions in a city several hundred kilometres from where I live. I got in touch with the bank, straightened the mess out (in this case by having a new card issued), and was on my way. I've has credit cards locked because I myself made a series of unexpected and large transactions overseas. I

Western Union actually bought an internet bank account transfer company called Custom House [customhouse.com] recently, which is really good if you want to transfer money between bank accounts in different countries. So they're at least dipping their toes in "this newfangled interweb thing".

Bank, in the US, has a specific meaning, and requires FDIC insurance of your deposits, as well as lots of other good stuff that would prevent the sorts of abuses PayPal regularly visits on its customers.

anyone doing any kind of business that generates real money should get setup with credit card processing or some type of real bank. On top of randomly screwing people, paypal also nickle and dime people to death. Never will use paypal again.

Absolutely true. I run a conference where we allow registrations by credit card (actually, we strongly encourage registration by CC, because all other forms of payment except cash are a massive pain). We looked long and hard at different options and while PayPal's merchant processing was one possibility, we went with a standard merchant account through FirstData / Citibank. Never been happier. Excellent service. Clear-as-a-bell charges, although somewhat intricate, and good code support for those who e

You should still be careful with that; once you withdraw it, immediately transfer it from your paypal-linked bank to a different bank since PayPal has that bank information and could easily reverse a charge.

Why hasn't he called them directly, told them to elevate as high as it can go, preferably (to their own advantage) to someone with a lawyer standing next to him; told the guy to turn on his speaker phone; and handed his phone to HIS lawyer?

People online don't generally think of doing things the old way when the new way seems so easy.

We also don't read EULAs. So we don't read account agreements in general. Bank account agreements included. So it's unlikely we'll read the Paypal account agreement and see where it isn't in agreement with any bank account agreement we've ever not read. So our surprise upon finding out they're not a bank and don't have the same regulations as a bank is genuine, if self-inflicted.